No homecoming jitters for Norris

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He wasn’t quite sure how he’d handle pitching for the first time against the San Francisco Giants at the same AT&T Park in which he’d attended dozens of games as fan.

This is how Norris handled it: seven innings pitched, three hits, two runs, one walk, 10 strikeouts in a 4-3, 11-inning victory.

“It really didn’t faze me,” said Norris, who grew up a half hour up the road in Novato, Calif. “I thought it would a little bit more.”

Winning atmosphere

Matt Downs went hitless in his first four at-bats Sunday filling in at second base for rookie Jose Altuve. On his fifth at-bat, Downs grounded an 11th-inning single up the middle that drove in Altuve — who had entered the game two innings earlier as a pinch runner — for the winning run. That hit came one year and three days after the Astros claimed Downs from the Giants off waivers.

“I don’t play that up at all,” Downs said. “I’ve got a lot of friends on the other side — a lot of great guys. It’s just a big win, whether we’re playing the Giants or Cubs or whoever we’re playing when we get one late like that.”

Downs insisted he found much more significance in how a rookie-laden Astros team split the taut series in front of four sellout crowds. The scores of the four games: 3-1, 2-1, 2-1, 4-3.
Rookie reliever David Carpenter, for one, reveled in picking up his first career save in such an electric setting.

“It’s huge,” Carpenter said. “It was everything I’d hoped for. In front of a big crowd like that, they’re baseball fans. They really support their team. To come in here against the defending world champs and being able to split a series with them, that’s really a plus.”

Can Bogusevic lock up a starting job if he continues at his current production (.290 after an 0-for-5 game Sunday)?

“I don’t think we’re just going to give him the job,” Mills said. “I think you have to say, ‘Hey, at worst you can maybe platoon out there.’ To see him continue swing the bat like he has is pretty nice. He’s going to have start making some adjustments, there’s no doubt about it. We’ll see if he’s able to make those adjustments.”